Steve

Steve Reviews It - Winter Toy Shop 10199

Steve — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:38:00 GMT

Went to the Cincinnatti Lego Store to buy the Green Grocer in January. Sold out of it the day before. AGAIN! ARRGHH! Thats the third time. Well backup plan time. "Do you have any Medival Marketplaces?" - "No sold out yesterday." *&^%$#$ Do you have any of the new giant pirate ship?" - "No sold out this morning."amp;@%#^&#*#&#$&$#*$#*#$*##*.....wait">*&@%#^&#*#&#$&$#*$#*#$*##*.....wait is that the Winter Toy Shop. Yes. Last one on the shelf. I expected to have missed out on this set because it had such a short run.

This is a very nice set. Full of minifigures and extra details. The building itself is fairly small but has some very clever building techniques to create the details. The "toys" are also nicely done as well. If you can find this still I recomend snagging it up.

Pros: Nice pieces. Has three short legs including one in purple. The light pole glass bulbs are very unique. Would look great on a layout, but finding so many would be difficult. Comes with 2 lg. pine trees and 2 short ones plus the giant brick tree. White cat, special heads, and jester hat round out a nice bonus.

Cons: I had a heck of a time getting the roof pieces on. Possible I did some step wrong as I was watching the Super Bowl while building it. Building seems small if you have built any of the Cafe Corner style building recently.

-Steve

Steve Review It - 10197 Fire Brigade

Steve — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:28:00 GMT

Went to the Cincinatti LEGO Store to buy the Green Grocer. Sold out the day before. Just like when I tried to buy it in Chicago. Bought the Fire Brigade in its place. This set is incredible. Buy this set. There are no cons to this set. Excelent look, pieces and details. This was a very fun build. Would be perfect to add some extra bays with a second set. Easily one of the best town sets ever.

-Steve

Steve Reviews It - Temple of the Crystal Skull

Steve — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:27:00 GMT

If you ignore the raping of the Indiana Jones movies by George Lucas, and judge this set on its own merit, it ranks very highly. This is an awesome parts set. Tons of rare color pieces. It has over 100 dark tan pieces! It has a nice selection of plant pieces as well. It has 3 dark green and 3 bright green large leaf piece. It also has six green small leaf pieces and ten three small leaf plant. It also has 14 tan 1X2X5 columns and six 1x6x5 wall sections. A couple of dark green pieces, dark red (mostly 1x1 round), and large amounts of gray and dark gray pieces round out this set. Total piece count 929

This set comes with 10 minifigs with the 2 Ugha Warriors being exclusive to this set. The crystal skulls are not really worth it and look much better in pictures then in real life. It does come with some nice minifig accessories including 2 old school axes in black, 2 black spears, 2 scythe blades, rifle, saber, knives, Indy's bag and whip, and a diamond.

The set was a medium hardness build. It has several ingenious Technic assemblies that add the "play" aspects to the set. You definitely want to build this on a table as the baseplate is somewhat flimsy to attach bricks on top of it. I don't know if it is supposed to match dark tan but my baseplate is not quite dark tan. This set uses stickers for much of its decoration, including the rock pattern of the baseplate. I did not attach my stickers and it looks much less finished then the box picture. I do believe all of the stickers do not overlap more then one piece.

Overall a nice addition to my collection.

-Steve

Steve Reviews It - Troll Warship

Steve — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:16:00 GMT

I just built set # 7048 Troll Warship. Overall a very nice but easy build. With 493 pieces the set doesn't have that many complicated steps. It took me less then an hour to build at a leisurely pace. The pieces it does contain are rather nice. Not counting the limited use boat hull pieces it has 42 dark brown pieces. It also has 32 dark red headlight bricks and 22 dark red 1x2 plates. Not as uncommon as it used to be the dark red is still a nice addition. For those looking forward to expanding their castle armies it comes with a nice number (8) of minifigs, a giant troll and a dragon. I would nave preferred more details on the ship and it not have a dragon but a minor point. Overall a very nice parts set. If you can score a couple of these on clearance I highly recommend it.

-Steve

Steve Reviews It - Clickits

Steve — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:26:00 GMT

Jeramy Spurgeon said:

"I want to see a Clikits review next."

Some of you may remember the LEGO sponsered show we did at the Childrens Museum. This show was soon after we just organized as a club so you may not. It was an outside show with a billion kids, a few of us, and a few summer time Lego employees. We did a small layout that was actually really neat. We were all excited to be doing a show and especially one with Lego. There were various displays and the kids brought their own creations, who can forget "The Angry Wall", I sure can't. Those of us that were there remember the best part of the show. A table top full of clikits. Why was this overflowing mountain of useless crap good? Why was this waste of ABS plastic the best of the show? It was the best because it was the domain of the Clikit Girl. This was not the underage prostitutes that cover the clikit boxes, but a super hot chick who ended up with a great summer job. Knowing how much hot chicks dig guys who are willing to pick up disgarded toys designed for girls 1/3 their age, I promply started picking up all the leftover trodden clikits. Wooed by this super cool masculine display, Clikit Girl ( I forget her name and yes she told me) promptly offered me a whole bag of of the pastel plastic bits. To wrap this tale up it turns out she was a ***, at least thats the only thing I can figure. She did not join us for mini golf later that night, but the former master builder(I forgot his name as well) posing as a master builder did.

Clickits - What the hell was the Lego company thinking? I rate them 0 studs because they have none.

Clikit Girl - 8.9 out of 10 - Hot hot hot

-Steve

Steve Reviews It - Bellville

Steve — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:30:00 GMT

My plan for the Lego Store shopping spree met with limited success. First they didn't have the Green Grocer, then they didn't have the Technic bulldozer either, and that was my backup plan item. I was able to get a Cafe Corner and I quickly filled two large pick a brick cups. Well I saw the Bellville set 7586 for $80.

I had read some reviews of the set and thought it had some neat uncommon pieces but was afraid of the high price point and fear of useless pieces. It turns out this set is full of usefull pieces you could use in almost any project, a nice selection of uncommon usefull, and very few worthless pieces of crap. I counted only two or three totally useless pieces. These pieces like the baby and the bear have zero attachment poins. They can not even stick between studs like the fairy pieces. It does have a few pieces like the parents or the pink panels that are mostly useless but the set overall doesn't have many. Turns out I really like this set and would seriously consider buying another. If you have thought about buying a Belville set but couldn't bring yourself to do it, this is a very nice set if you want some different colors or unusual pieces. My favorite piece in the set is the baby toilet, I need to get some more of the for a spaceship design I've thought of.

Pros:

lots of food pieces, apples, turkey drumsticks, croisants, bananna,hot dogs

pink windows including a bay window.

cool gold dinner plates and 1x1 cones

large green pine tree, small green pine tree, 3 bright green plants, 3 pink flowers - the trees are not shown on the box at all

stickers- yes in this case the stickers are a plus, not putting them on gives lots of good pieces, printed bricks would have made the set crap. They put stickers everywhere.

Baby toilet piece - Ok so this piece probally only appeals to me, but I am positive it hasn't ever been used for a spaceship part before.

Cons:

couple of totally useless pieces

some mostly useless pieces like the figs

some cloth pillows and sheets, clothes - come all sealed in their own plastic so your real pieces aren't tainted

baseplate color ( its a light blue) will be tough to use in a layout unless had enough for maybe a river.

Overall I rank it 5 out of six studs.

-Steve

Space ship do over

Steve — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:18:00 GMT

Well what I had built for my spaceship had some stability issues, so I have tore it all apart and rebuilt it. It is a much better design for lasting structure. Now I'm really struggling in getting workable functions for the automated movements I'm trying to include in this ship. Mechanical fuctions are not my specialty, at least building them from scratch. (I'm ironically good at fixing them though ie copier repair) I'm hoping to work this out without another redesign, but we will see. I'm not used to rebuilding or building where fuction dictates form. I really think I'm going to have to go and aquire some more parts for this project.

I'm trying to get some pictures uploaded on progress but I keep getting stymied.

-Steve

Space ship construction has begun.

Steve — Sun, 27 May 2007 22:51:00 GMT

Well, I've started construction on that giant spaceship I keep talking about. Right now I have the back 1/3 first floor frame done. I've taken a couple of pics but don't have them yet ready for upload. It is approx. 70 studs so far, so my estimate is it will be 210+ studs. Of course that number may change rappidly depending on how construction goes. I have already used up most of my long technic beams, so we shall see. I do know this rear section is going to be fighter ship hanger/storage like on an aircrat carrier. I'm working on some very cool mechanical issues, so this section may take awhile. Time to dust off the RCX....

Steve

David's Jedi Avatar gives me the creeps

Steve — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:44:00 GMT

That's right I said it. David your Jedi avatar gives me the creeps but then I always laugh at it. The avatar pics must be set at very low resolution because all of them are very jagged. But the jaggedness of your pic is mostly noticable in the eyes. It make it look like one of your eyes is looking way up to your left and one is looking somewhere to the right. Combined with your many posts it seems as if your picture is looking at me and following me around. If it was bigger is would be really creepy. First I'm creeped out then I think of a cross eyed Jedi trying to fight. It must make using the force to move stuff a pain. And Jedi choaking the correct person must take some trial and error.

Stop looking at me!

Steve